Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund; Börge Hellström

  Grens swore out loud in the empty room, opened the window and shouted something at someone in civvies who happened to be walking along the asphalt path across the courtyard of Kronoberg, then wrenched open the door and limped up and down the long corridor until his back and forehead were wet with sweat, then sat down on his chair to catch his racing breath.

  He had never felt like this before.

  He was used to anger, almost addicted to it. He always looked for conflict, hid himself away in it.

  It wasn't that.

  This feeling, like it was there, the truth, as if the answer was staring at him, laughing at him, a peculiar feeling of being so close without being able to see.

  Ewert Grens took the file in his hand and went to lie down with his legs outstretched on the floor behind the corduroy sofa. He started to leaf through the papers starting with the voice informing the police about a dead man in Västmannagatan, through the following two weeks working at full capacity with access to all technical resources, to his trips to Copenhagen and Siedlce.

  He swore again, maybe shouted at someone again.

  They hadn't gotten anywhere.

  He was going to lie on the floor until he understood whose voice he had listened to so many times, what it was he didn't understand and couldn't quite get hold of, why the feeling that the truth was close at hand, laughing at him, was so intense.

  * * *

  He heard the keys jangling.

  Two guards unlocking and opening the cells at the far end, the ones with a view over the large gravel pitch, Cell 8 and opposite, Cell 16.

  He braced himself, prepared himself for the twenty minutes each day that could mean death.

  It had been a god awful night.

  Despite having been awake for days, he had lain there, waiting for sleep that never came. They were there with him, Zofia and Hugo and Rasmus, they had stood outside the window and sat on the edge of his bed, lain down beside him and he had been forced to drive them away. They no longer existed; inside he had to stop feeling, he had a mission that he had chosen to complete and that left no room for dreaming-he had to suppress, forget. Anyone who dreamed in prison soon went under.

  They were getting closer. The keys jangled again, Cell 7 and Cell 15 were opened and he heard a faint morning and someone else reply go to hell.

  He had eventually gotten up-when Zofia had disappeared and the dark outside was densest he had held the dread at bay with chin-ups and sit-ups and jumping on and off the bed with both his feet held together. There wasn't much space and he had hit the wall a couple of times, but it was good to sweat and to feel his heart beating in his rib cage.

  His work had already begun.

  In a matter of hours on that first afternoon he had earned himself the respect in the unit that he needed to continue. He now knew who was in charge of supplies and dealing, in which units and in which cells. One of them was here, the Greek in Cell 2; the other two were on separate floors in Block H. Piet Hoffmann would get in the first grams soon, the ones he was responsible for and that he would use to blow out the competition.

  The guards were even closer, opened Cell 6 and Cell 14. Only a couple of minutes more.

  The time after the cells were opened, between seven and seven twenty, was crucial. If he survived that, he would survive the rest of the day.

  He had prepared himself in the way that he would prepare himself every morning. In order to survive, he had to assume that in the course of the evening or night, someone had found out about his other name, that there was a Paula who worked for the authorities, a snitch who was there to break the organization. He was safe as long as the cell was locked, a closed door would hold off an attack, but the first twenty minutes once the cell had been opened, after the first good morning, were the difference between life and death; a well-planned attack would always be carried out when the guards had disappeared into their room for a cup of coffee and a break-twenty minutes with no staff in the unit and the time when several of the many murders in prison had been carried out in recent years.

  "Good morning."

  The guard had opened the door and looked in. Piet Hoffmann was sitting on the bed and stared at him without replying-it wasn't how he felt, it was just something he said because the rules said he should.

  The idiot guard didn't give in, he would stand there and wait until he got an answer, confirmation that the prisoner was alive and that everything was as it should be.

  "Good morning. Now fucking leave me in peace."

  The guard nodded and carried on, two cells at a time. This was when Hoffmann had to act. When the last door was opened it was too late.

  A sock around the handle, he pulled the door-that normally couldn't be locked or closed completely from the inside-toward him, jamming it by forcing the fabric of the sock between the door and door frame.

  One second.

  He put the simple wooden chair that normally stood by the wardrobe just inside the threshold, careful to make sure that it blocked the greater part of the doorway.

  One second.

  The pillow and blanket and trousers were made to look like a body under the covers, the blue arm of his training jacket a continuation of the body. It wouldn't fool anyone. But it was an illusion that would be given a fast double take.

  Half a second.

  Both the guards disappeared down the corridor. All the cells were unlocked and open now and Piet Hoffmann positioned himself to the left of the door, with his back to the wall. They could come at any moment. If they had found out, if he had been exposed, death would strike immediately.

  He looked at the sock around the handle, the chair in front of the door, the pillows under the blanket.

  Two and a half seconds.

  His protection, his time to hit back.

  He was breathing heavily

  He would stand like this, waiting, for twenty minutes. It was his first morning in Aspsås prison.

  * * *

  There was someone standing in front of him. Two thin suit legs that had said something and were now waiting for an answer. He didn't reply.

  "Grens? What are you doing?"

  Ewert Grens had fallen asleep on the floor behind the brown corduroy sofa with an investigation file on his stomach.

  "What about our meeting? It was you who wanted it this early. I assume that you've been here all night?"

  His back ached a bit. The floor had been harder this time.

  "That's none of your business."

  He rolled over and heaved himself up, using the arms of the sofa for support, and the world spun ever so slightly.

  "How are you?"

  "That's none of your business either."

  Lars Ågestam sat down on the sofa and waited while Ewert Grens went over to his desk. There was no love lost between them. In fact, they couldn't stand each other. The young prosecutor and older detective superintendent came from different worlds and neither had any inclination to visit the other anymore. Ågestam had tried at first, he had chatted and listened and watched until he realized it was pointless, Grens had decided to hate him and nothing would change that.

  "Västmannagatan 79. You wanted a report."

  Lars Ågestam nodded.

  "I get the distinct feeling that you're getting nowhere."

  They weren't getting anywhere. But he wouldn't admit it. Not yet.

  Ewen Grens fully intended to keep hold of his resources, which Ågestam had the power to remove.

  "We're working on several theories."

  "Such as?"

  "I'm not prepared to say anything yet."

  "I can't imagine what you've got. If you did have something, you'd give it to me and then tell me to shove off. I don't think you've got anything at all. I think it's time to scale down the case."

  "Scale down?"

  Lars Ågestam waved his skinny arm at the desk and the piles of ongoing investigations.

  "You're not getting anywhere. The investigation is at a standstill. You know as well as
I do, Grens, that it's unreasonable to tie up so many resources when an investigator is having no success."

  "I never give up on a murder."

  They looked at each other. They came from different worlds. "So, what have you got then?"

  "You never scale down murder cases, Ågestam. You solve them." You know--"

  "And that is what I have done for thirty-five years. Since you were running around peeing in your diaper."

  The prosecutor wasn't listening anymore. You just needed to decide that you weren't going to hear anything and then you didn't. It was a long time now since Ewert Grens had been able to hurt him.

  "I read through the conclusions of the preliminary investigation. But it was… quick. You mentioned a number of names on the periphery of the investigation that haven't been fully probed. Do that. Investigate every name on the periphery and close it. You've got three days. Then we'll meet again. And if you haven't got anything more by then, you can make as much fuss as you like, I will scale down the case."

  Ewert Grens watched the determined suit-back leave his office and would no doubt have shouted after it if the other voice hadn't already been there, the one that had been in his head every hour for two weeks now, that was once again whispering and wheedling its way in, persistently repeating the short sentences, driving him mad.

  "A dead man. Vdstmannagatan 79. Fourth floor."

  He had three days.

  Who are you?

  Where are you?

  He had stood with his back pressed hard against the cell wall for twenty minutes, every muscle tensed, every sound an imagined threat of attack. Nothing had happened.

  His fifteen fellow prisoners had been to the toilet and showered and then gone to the kitchen for an early breakfast, but none of them had stopped outside his door, no one had tried to open it. He was still only Piet Hoffmann here, a member of Wojtek, arrested with three kilos of Polish Yellow in his boot and convicted of possession, and a previous conviction for having beaten some bastard pig before firing two shots at him.

  They had disappeared, one by one, some to the laundry and the workshop, most to the classrooms, a couple to the hospital. No one went on strike and stayed in their cell, which often happened: the striker laughed at the threat of punishment and continued to refuse to work as the extra couple of months on twelve years existed only on official papers.

  "Hoffmann."

  It was the principal prison officer who had welcomed him the day before, with blue eyes that pierced whoever was standing in front of him.

  "Yes?"

  "Time to get out of your cell."

  "Is it?"

  "Your work duties. Cleaning. The administration building and the workshops. But not today. Today you're going to come with me and try to learn how and where and when to use your brushes and detergents."

  They walked side by side down the corridor through the unit and down the stairs to the underground passage.

  When Paula arrives at Aspsås, his work duties will already be fixed. On his first afternoon, he'll start as the new cleaner in the administration block and workshop.

  The shapeless fabric of the prison-issue clothes chafed against his thighs and shoulders as they approached the second floor of Block B.

  Prison management usually only grants cleaning duties as a reward.

  They stopped in front of the toilets outside the main door to the workshop.

  Then reward him.

  Piet Hoffmann nodded-he would start his cleaning round here, with the cracked basin and piss pot in a changing room that stank of mold. They continued into the big workshop with its faint smell of diesel.

  "The toilet out there, the office behind the glass window and then the entire workshop. You got it?"

  He stayed standing in the doorway, looking around the room. Workbenches with something that looked like bits of shiny piping on them, shelves with piles of packing tape, punch presses, pallet jacks, half-full pallets and at every work station, a prisoner who earned ten kronor an hour. Prison workshops often produced simple items that were then sold to commercial manufacturers; at Österåker, he had cut out square red wooden blocks for a toy manufacturer. Here it was lamppost components: decimeter-long rectangular covers for the access hatch to the cables and switches that is positioned at the base, the kind that you see ten meters apart along every road, which no one ever notices but has to be made somewhere. The principal prison officer walked into the workshop and pointed at the dust and overflowing bins, while Hoffmann nodded at prisoners he didn't recognize: the one in his twenties standing by a punching press bending over the edges of the rectangular cover; the one who spoke Finnish over by the drilling machine and made small holes for every screw; and the one farthest away by the window who had a big scar from his throat to his cheek and was leaning over the barrel of diesel as he cleaned his tools.

  "Look at the floor. It's damned important that you're thorough about it. Scrub as hard as you damn well can, otherwise it smells."

  Piet Hoffmann didn't hear what the principal prick was saying. He had stopped by the barrel of diesel and the window. It was the one he had aimed at. He had lain on the church tower balcony holding an imaginary gun and shot at the window he selected exactly fifteen hundred and three meters away. It was a beautiful church and you got a clear view of the tower from here, as free a view as you got of the window from the tower.

  He turned around, back to the window, memorized the rectangular room that was divided by three thick, whitewashed concrete pillars, big enough for a person to stand behind and not be seen. He took a couple of steps forward toward the pillar that was nearest to the window and stood close by it. It was just as big as he thought-he could stand there and be completely hidden. He walked slowly back across the room, getting the feel of it, getting used to it, didn't stop until he got to the room behind the glass wall that was an office for the prison wardens.

  "Good, Hoffmann, that room… it's got to shine."

  A small desk, some shelves, a dirty rug. There was a pair of scissors in the pen holder, a telephone on the wall, two drawers that were unlocked and mostly empty.

  It was a matter of time.

  If everything went wrong, if Paula was exposed, the more time he had, the more chance he had of surviving.

  The principal officer walked in front of him along the passage and under the prison yard to the administration building, four locked doors with four watchful cameras. They looked up into each one, nodded to the lens, then waited for central security to press one of their buttons and the click that told them that the door was open. It took them more than ten minutes to put a couple of hundred meters underground behind them.

  The first floor of the administration block was a narrow corridor with a view of the prison reception area. Every prisoner who was escorted in fresh from the chain, through security to reception, could be studied from the six offices and the poky meeting room. The chief warden and his administrative staff had seen him as he was led in yesterday, a priority prisoner with handcuffs and leg irons in Kronoberg remand clothes, with streaky fair hair and a salt-and-pepper two-week beard.

  "Are you following me, Hoffmann? You'll be coming here every day. And when you leave, there won't be a speck of dirt left behind. Will there? Loads of floors to be scrubbed, desks to be dusted, trash cans to be emptied and windows to be cleaned. Do you have a problem with that?"

  The rooms had institution-gray walls and floors and ceilings, as if the gloominess and hopelessness of the corridor spilled over into the offices. There were a few pots with green plants and a few circles of ceramic tiles on one of the walls, otherwise it was all dead, furniture and colors that did not tempt you to dare dream of anywhere else.

  "Perhaps we should introduce you. Get a move on."

  The chief warden was in his fifties, a man who was as gray as his walls. It said Oscarsson on his door.

  "This is Hoffmann. He's the new cleaner here from tomorrow."

  The chief held out a hand that was soft, but wit
h a firm grip.

  "Lennart Oscarsson. I want both cans emptied every day. The one under the table and the one over there by the visitors' chairs. And if there are any unwashed glasses, take them with you."

  It was a big room with windows that faced the fence and prison yard, but the same feeling as in all the others: a joyless institution, no room for anything private here, not even a family photo in a silver frame or a diploma on the walls. With one exception. On the desk, two bunches of flowers in crystal vases.

  "Tulips?"

  The principal officer went over to the desk and the long green stems with equally green buds. He held the white greeting cards in his hand while he read the message on both of them out loud.

  "With thanks for a successful partnership, Aspilis Business Association."

  The governor arranged one of the bunches on his desk, twenty-five yellow tulips that hadn't yet bloomed.

  "I think so, they certainly look like tulips. We get a lot of flowers nowadays. The whole of Aspsås works here. Or supplies us with something. And all the study visits. It wasn't long ago that everyone looked down on the prison service. Now it's bloody nonstop, and every arrangement or incident fills the news bulletins and front pages."

  He looked with pride at the flowers that he had somehow just complained about.

  "They'll open soon. It usually takes a couple of days."

  Piet Hoffmann nodded and then left, the principal prison officer a few meters in front, as before.

  Tomorrow.

  They would bloom tomorrow.

  Ewen Grens removed two empty plastic cups and a half-eaten almond slice from the small wooden table, then sat down and sank into the softness of the corduroy sofa while he waited for Sven and Hermansson to sit down on either side.

  The handwritten, single sheet of paper from a notepad was stained brown in one corner where some coffee had spilled, and had grease marks in another from stray almond-slice crumbs.